Title - Noise in Odisha Assembly over railway budget

Bhubaneswar: Odisha assembly on Thursday witnessed noisy scenes with opposition Congress MLAs rushing to well of the House after the treasury bench displayed placards protesting the "meagre" allocation for the state in the railway budget.

Normalcy returned only after Speaker Pradip Kumar Amat urged the ruling party members to cooperate him to run the question hour.

After the house resumed its budget session today following a nine-day break, ruling party members took the first opportunity to express their displeausre over the amount of allocation for the state.



As the speaker allowed question hour after obituary reference to a former member of the house, ruling BJD MLAs stood on their seats holding placards as a mark of protest to the allocation for the state.

The issue was again raised in the House during zero hour when the deputy whip of BJD Sanjay Dasburma targeted the central government. "Though the railway generated Rs 14,000 crore revenue from the state in 2012-13, it allocated only 869 crore for the rail infrastructure development in the state," Dasburma said.

He demanded a censure motion against the centre accusing it of adopting a "step-motherly" attitude towards a non-Congress ruled state as Odisha. "The state government got only Rs 868.82 crore against its demand of Rs 3050 crore," he pointed out.

As the speaker did not allow the censure motion, the angry BJD MLAs staged a dharna in front of Mahatma Gandhi statue in the assembly premises. The leader of opposition Bhupinder Singh of Congress demanded a special debate on railway budget in the state assembly. He said the Congress led UPA government had been allocating more funds to the state in comparison to the previous NDA government in which the ruling BJD was a part.

Senior BJD member Amar Prasad Satpathy also favoured a special debate on the railway budget.